Bihar NGO scam: Sushil Modi seeks monthly updates on funds

After the police nabbed more than a dozen people who were allegedly involved in the Bhagalpur NGO which siphoned government funds, deputy CM and Finance Minister Sushil Kumar Modi is making sure everything is at place and therefore has asked principal secretaries, commissioners and district magistrates to update all government accounts and submit monthly updates to the finance department.

Modi had revealed that during the investigation it was found that around Rs 302 crore was siphoned and investigators from the Economic Offences Unit believe that the amounts might increase significantly since the bank accounts of the NGO- Srijan Mahila Sahyog Samiti are being tracked. (pti)

After the police nabbed more than a dozen people who were allegedly involved in the Bhagalpur NGO which siphoned government funds, deputy CM and Finance Minister Sushil Kumar Modi is making sure everything is at place and therefore has asked principal secretaries, commissioners and district magistrates to update all government accounts and submit monthly updates to the finance department. Modi had revealed that during the investigation it was found that around Rs 302 crore was siphoned and investigators from the Economic Offences Unit believe that the amounts might increase significantly since the bank accounts of the NGO- Srijan Mahila Sahyog Samiti are being tracked.

The Indian Express quoted EOU source saying, “We have learnt about nine bank accounts of the NGO, owned by Manorama Devi, who died this February. We are also probing banks and the previous DMs and auditors general.” So far, seven people have been arrested in the case.

Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, leader of the Opposition party has said that the case is eligible to be investigated by the CBI or Enforcement Directorate since Srijan had connections with bureaucrats and politicians. The incident has made the state government take the bank accounts across the state under its discretion, Sushil Modi said.

The fund transfer scam of Bihar’s Bhagalpur based NGO is getting bigger and bigger with each passing day. On August 9, a team headed by Inspector-General (IG) (EOU) Jitendra Singh Gangwar flew to Bhagalpur via a special aircraft after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar raised the issue at a function that was organized to mark the ‘Earth Day’. Official sources while explaining the process with which the NGO was able to embezzle public funds said that once the state government released the funds to the district administration (say, for land acquisition), these funds were later transferred to the NGO bank account with the help of forged signature of the district magistrate in connivance with bank officials, according to PTI.